Note: I write some version of this essay about every two years which is a thing you know, if you’ve known me for any amount of time. Hopefully, because of the Lord, this essay is getting more Christ-like and more sanctified as the years go by. But I’m honestly not sure. I’m 55 in the pics below, Tristan is 43.
I have this relationship with my body which, since about age 9, I have built it up (weights, running, supplements, nutrition) so that I can then tear it back down, which is what a football season always required, and what sparring with a pro heavyweight boxer required, and is now what preparing for my one football game a year requires. I have broken ribs, toes, my nose, a leg, nearly all of my fingers, and a collarbone. For the most part, I have enjoyed this relationship, as it has given shape and purpose to my workouts, and has always put some kind of fun challenge on the horizon for me to dream about as I’m driving around and listening to music[1].
I am now 47 years old and play one fully-padded, full-contact, semipro football game a year. I do this in part because I just love doing it, but also as a way to play with my son, who is 21 and who has eclipsed me in every way an athlete can – he is bigger, faster, stronger, and better in every sense of the word. I love this (the playing, and the realization that he’s better) and when I watch him play, I’m not so much enjoying the expertise/success of what he’s doing so much as I’m just enjoying the person that he is and the friendship that we have. God has been so kind, there.
In a nutshell, he is the kind of football player who never looks for a way out of the battle, even when the chips are down. He’s the kind of guy you want in the foxhole (or the huddle) with you. I’m exceedingly proud of this.
That said, in our most recent game, which occurred three weeks ago, I re-injured some ribs that I had previously injured playing football in France a decade ago (when I was still, technically, too old). There are no new fractures but the result is an annoying stabbing pain just below my left pec whenever I do anything like bending over to put on shoes or rolling over onto my left side while in bed. Needless to say, running or jumping or sparring or lifting heavy[2] is temporarily off the table, which has me all kinds of knotted-up, emotionally, because it’s a reminder that in the not-too-distant-future (or maybe already) I will have “prepared for” my last thing. There will be no more games to play, no more sparring sessions to conduct, and no more battles to fight.
As the years go by, this is presenting to me as a deeply spiritual issue more than it is a physical one. I mean, on the physical side, will I even care about “building” my body up if there’s no looming occasion to tear it back down? When I was sparring with my pro heavyweight buddy, I approached the job of getting him ready for fights as my job. I wanted to push him as much as possible and give him as many quality rounds as I could. I loved doing this, even though it occasionally resulted in my own “tearing down” via everything from bloody noses to shoulder and hand injuries. It all felt “worth it.”
But on a much more significant spiritual level, there are the “who am I without this?” questions, but also the “what kind of relationship do I have with my body when said body is no longer fit to compete?” questions. I have spent most of the last three weeks being frustrated with my body…with the pain, with the lack of healing, etc…but in doing so, am I also being frustrated with what God has given me in this season of life, and in fact what God is probably ordaining for the rest of my life? And, in that, what will my response to God be? My choices are to grow bitter and disillusioned, or to ask the Lord (as I always should) what he would have me be. I don’t know why this (the humility to ask) is so hard? But perhaps it has something to do with the fear that what He wants me to be is different than what I want to be.
I know because of scripture, but also because of the 47 years of my life, that God is good and kind and has worked everything in my life – even the apparent crushing disappointments – for my good and for His glory. He is no less trustworthy now, even though circumstantially I am feeling the frustration of a decaying body. He will be no less good even if I have played my last snap or sparred my last round (which I hope isn’t the case).
I hold in one had the desire and wish to be a fundamentally different kind of person – namely the kind who is happy to sit by a fire and read for hours, or to putter around on some non-dangerous non-physical project. In short, a normal person.
I hold in another hand the reality that I am not that kind of guy, and never have been, but because of the Lord there’s a world in which I could be that kind of guy. I pray that this will be the case, increasingly.
I recently visited Paul’s prison cell in Rome, where they threw the broken body of our brother into what amounted to a hole in the ground. While in this hole, and while no doubt suffering all kinds of physical and emotional pain, he wrote 2 Timothy by the light of one candle. From this point, geographically, he could have heard the cries of 80,000 audience members in the Colosseum (which was a couple of blocks away), celebrating physical strength. That would have been a special kind of torture for me. And by this point in his life he was suffering with no logical hope of freedom from pain or from his fate – he wrote that he was ready to be “poured out like a drink offering.”
I want to be more like Paul, who knew how to suffer, but not without hope.
[1] Interestingly (to me at least) this (dreaming about sports) has always comprised the lion’s share of my relationship with music. So in a way, what will music be without sports? Interesting.
[2] These are basically all the non-vocational, non-family, non-bonds-of-marriage things I enjoy in life.